"If I can do it, anyone can?"

I'm 8w3d today and had another ultrasound this morning. Baby is looking great and was jumping up and down at a rate of knots! I also heard the heartbeat for the first time. RE assures me that everything looks perfect, and I am just to keep taking the progesterone and estrogen for another 4 weeks, and go back for another appointment in 2 - 3 weeks. I am finally starting to have some confidence that this baby is here to stay, and finally enjoying my pregnancy like I promised at the beginning!

When I started this blog, it was in the hope that one day, I would be able to offer hope and encouragement to others who have had multiple IVF failures. And it would be tempting at this point to write a post to all of those people, saying "don't give up! If I can finally have success, anyone can!" But I now believe that that would be too simplistic, too unrealistic, and even a little disrespectful to some people. It is true that I have found real solace and huge hope from reading and hearing stories of other women who have gone through endless treatments and have eventually got pregnant and given birth, and I still hope that my blog will be a source of all these things to women who find themselves in similar circumstances. However, today I want to focus on those criteria that are game changers, and that lead many people down different roads.

1. Desire
Let's face it, if you are going to put your body and your pocket through endless strain, you have to have a really really strong desire to be pregnant. Many women are motivated more by motherhood than pregnancy itself and are ready to look at other options quite quickly. Some do IVF at the request of their partner and are not really convinced that it's what they want to do; others put a limit on how many times they will do IVF from the very beginning. And there are hundreds of other reasons why doing multiple IVFs is just not for everyone. I have huge respect for all those difficult decisions that people are faced with every day.

2. Money
If you don't have a good supply of money or pretty exceptional insurance (I only know one country where people have free access to an unlimited number of IVFs for their first 2 children), multiple IVFs are simply impossible. I will never cease to be grateful for the fact that we could afford this, and although we literally could have built a house with the money we have spent so far on IVF and other treatments, we really did not suffer hugely. I don't have the figures, but I would guess that the vast majority of people with infertility in the world simply cannot afford what we did.

3. Resilience
If you have the desire and the money, and have decided to go for the long haul, you also need to be emotionally tough as nails in order to deal with the constant disappointments. Although resilience can (maybe) be learned to a certain extent later in life, my feeling is that it's about 90% genetics and childhood upbringing, and therefore not under our control to a large extent. Don't get me wrong, there were times when we wondered how we would get out of bed and face the world again after another BFN, but I think we are both really blessed in that we bounce back pretty quickly. For some people, the strain would be too much to handle, and I think that is perfectly normal and an excellent reason to say "enough".

4. Medical hope
If we had been told by several doctors that we should think about other options because IVF wasn't likely to work for us with our own eggs/sperm, we would definitely have gone down another road a long time ago. We're optimistic but not crazy. Doctors, although I don't believe them blindly, do have a lot of influence over the decisions we take, and rightly so. After our 6th IVF, I asked our RE if it was him and his wife in our situation, would he carry on trying? When he said yes, he would, it gave us a pretty big boost in confidence to go on.

5.  Lady Luck
Some people get pregnant after 8 tries, some after 10, some after 17, and some....some never do. We were so aware every time we did IVF that this might never happen for us and we might end up broke and with nothing to show for it. So the phrase "if I can do it, anyone can", just isn't accurate.


I am lucky enough to belong to an online forum of women who have been supporting each other through infertility for the last 2 years. In that group, we have people who have been successful on their first or second IVF attempt; one who had a disastrous IVF which was converted to an IUI, which worked; one who had 2 failed IVFs and was just about to use donor eggs for her 3rd attempt when she fell pregnant naturally; several who have used donor sperm, donor eggs or donor embryos; one who is pursuing motherhood through a gestational carrier after several IVF failures and miscarriages; one who is waiting for an adoption placement after 4 IVFs; two who adopted first, then had their second child through IVF; one who had her first child through IVF and has been trying for 2 years to have her second; and yes, there are also those who simply stopped appearing on the board. Did they succeed in IVF? Did they choose to live child free? Did they find another road to go down? We'll probably never know. Each one has gone through a deeply emotional and personal journey to get to where they are, and anyone contemplating IVF will have to go through their own unique and often difficult journey. I wish each and every one happiness, whatever that looks like, and if happiness is not possible, the equanimity to live with the cards they are dealt.